Million Dollar Musings: MLB DFS Picks for Friday, June 7th
CheeseIsGood, a winner of a $1,000,000 1st-place prize on both DraftKings and FanDuel, is here to give you his musings on the upcoming MLB DFS slate. Whether you are looking for the top pitchers or the best stacks, Cheese has you covered with an extensive deep dive into his MLB DFS picks.
Happy Friday! We’ve got ourselves a doozy of a pitching slate on tonight’s 10-gamer. It’s not exactly filled with aces, but it’s filled with viable options in all different price ranges. Offense is a little tougher to find, but there’s still plenty to love in all different salary ranges. Let’s jump right in and see if we can narrow this pitching pool to a reasonable depth.
Friday Pitching: MLB DFS Picks on FanDuel & DraftKings
We have a very deep pitching slate where you could make some sort of case for playing as many as 15 of the 20 pitchers. I’m going to narrow things down as far as I can, starting by breaking the top tier into two buckets:
UPSIDE PITCHERS IN TOUGHER MATCHUPS
Yoshinobu Yamamoto at Yankees – 28.4% K, 5.2% BB, 3.32 ERA, 2.92 SIERA
Garrett Crochet vs. Red Sox – 33.7% K, 5.4% BB, 3.49 ERA, 2.48 SIERA
Bryce Miller at Royals – 25.7% K, 6.9% BB, 3.18 ERA, 3.56 SIERA
Nick Lodolo vs. Cubs – 26.1% K, 5.3% BB, 3.11 ERA, 3.23 SIERA
Michael King vs. Diamondbacks – 25.4% K, 10.1% BB, 3.82 ERA, 3.89 SIERA
LOWER K PITCHERS IN GOOD MATCHUPS
Chris Bassitt at A’s – 21.9% K, 9% BB, 4.13 ERA, 4.11 SIERA
Framber Valdez at Angels – 18.9% K, 7.7% BB, 3.95 ERA, 3.46 SIERA
Logan Webb at Rangers – 20.5% K, 6.1% BB, 2.95 ERA, 3.41 SIERA
Lance Lynn vs. Rockies – 21.2% K, 9.3% BB, 3.23 ERA, 4.28 SIERA
This is a super interesting pitching slate where the most talented pitchers are priced up and in tougher matchups, leaving us with likely chalk on some mid-tier pitchers in good matchups. I am always going to be interested in spending up to be different when the spend ups are higher strikeout pitchers, which is exactly what we have today.
At first glance, I assume that some combination of Chris Bassitt, Framber Valdez, Logan Webb, and Lance Lynn are the chalk on both sites. Most likely, Chris Bassitt and Lance Lynn look like the most obvious choices to pick up ownership based on their matchups, salary, and name recognition.
Before I dig through those mid-tier options, let me narrow down the spend-up group as much as possible. Personally, if I’m going to spend anything above the $8,300 mark of Bassitt on DK, or the $8,900 mark of Logan Webb on FD, I want to see a clear case for a ceiling game. This is not a slate where I’m spending up for any sort of floor or relative safety. If I want that, I’ll just play the better matchups and salary.
In looking for upside, it’s immediately clear that Garrett Crochet is the guy. His strikeout rate is 5% higher than the next-best pitcher on this slate, and he gets a matchup that should have something like 4-5 batters above 30% strikeouts. Overall, Boston has the highest strikeout rate in the league against left-handed pitching, making Crochet far and away my favorite tournament pitcher on this slate. I expect that everyone will come to that conclusion, but because of the presence of all the mid-tier options and even the pivots to the other spend-ups, I don’t see ownership being a huge concern here. For me, Crochet is the clear SP1 on DK, and my favorite tournament spend on FD.
Yoshinobu Yamamoto is a great pitcher, and I will not be stunned to see him succeed in any matchup, but I’m just not playing a guy against the Yankees on this slate. He does get a little boost assuming Juan Soto is out of the lineup, but it’s still a lineup with a lot of power, a lot of patience, and not a lot of strikeouts.
Bryce Miller is very good, but he’s seen some very low pitch counts, and he faces a low strikeout opponent. At his salary, I’m not interested. Michael King has shown no consistency, and the two big strikeout games look more like the outliers. At his DK salary, I might take some MME shots, and will play him ahead of Yamamoto and Miller, but he’s not in my primary pool. The strikeouts have disappeared for Nick Lodolo since coming off the IL, and while it’s only been two starts, I need to see them come back before I play him on this loaded of a slate.
Let me pause here and say that it is completely reasonable to play any of those pitchers I just nixed in any lineup, I’m just trying to narrow down my pool and be super picky with what I’m spending on.
For me, after Garrett Crochet, I’m looking at this group of Bassitt, Valdez, Webb, and Lynn.
I think we need to start by talking about Lance Lynn. If anything is going to end up at a concerning level of ownership, it’s probably Lynn due to both the matchup and the significant discount. Lynn is just $7,400 on DK and $7,500 on FD, and he’ll likely project even with, or ahead of the other pitchers in this group. The matchup is fantastic, but there is one little problem with Lance Lynn chalk – he’s not very good. You have to go back 8 starts to find a game where he has more than 5 strikeouts, and he has multiple walks in 7 of those 8 starts. But in his defense, most of those struggles, as always, have come against lefties, and Colorado is a mostly right-handed lineup. I say this all to say that I completely understand why Lynn is going to be popular tonight. He is still getting 25% K against right-handed bats, and he should see at least 5 righties tonight, mostly with high strikeout rates. I can only tell you where I stand on this, and you can decide what you want to do about it. On a slate with this many good options, I do not want to play a below-average pitcher as heavy chalk. I just don’t think Lynn is good enough to warrant it, even in this matchup. Of course, he’ll be in my MME portfolio, saved mostly for lineups with low-owned bats, but in my single entry and higher dollar builds, I’m fading this nonsense.
Chris Bassitt has a very similar overall stat line to Lance Lynn, but with one very clear difference. What made the old Lance Lynn so valuable was his long leash. Well, present-day Lynn has a lot more short outings, while present-day Bassitt is exactly what Lynn used to be. Lynn has topped 100 pitches twice in 12 starts, while Bassitt is over 100 pitches in 4 of his last 5. That leads to more strikeouts even with the same K%. The matchups are similar, as both guys benefit from facing more right-handed bats. The bottom of this Oakland lineup is filled with right-handed strikeouts, and Bassitt is at a 26.1% K rate against righties. This is the chalk I am going to eat.
Framber Valdez has one disaster start this season, and it came three weeks ago against the Angels. Personally, I don’t care one iota about that, but I do care a few iotas about his low 18.9% K rate this season. He is always in play for a quality start, but the upside has been very rare. I think he’s underpriced on FD at $7,900, but on DK, where he’s in the same salary range as everyone else, he’s just a leftover.
Logan Webb looks more like what Framber Valdez is supposed to be. Webb is also not a big strikeout pitcher, but he’s at least getting 5-6 Ks per start and a more consistent leash, going over 100 pitches regularly. Texas is not a good strikeout matchup but otherwise is not any real downgrade for Webb’s pitching style. If I’m looking for a pivot off of Lynn and can’t quite get up to Bassitt, I’m siding with Webb ahead of Valdez.
CHEAPER OPTIONS AND DART THROWING AT NONSENSE
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